Originally Posted by
icefractal
I don't see what the fuss is about. I mean, yes, that's a high initiative. So what? Honestly, a +6 or whatever you'd get just from having Improved Initiative would often be high enough to go first anyway; all this does is make that more consistent. And while it might seem "high for first level", that's an illusion - initiative doesn't scale by level.
In actual experience, I'm currently in a game with a character that has +28 Initiative (IIRC). And it's not a significant factor in their power.
However, this does demonstrate an important lesson - many people get paranoid about seeing "too high" numbers. So if you want to be good at something, get several factors that combine into awesomeness rather than a single big bonus. The actual effect will be the same, but people won't see double digits and claim you're "rollplaying".